These are the remains of a lock from the original Santee Canal, visible from the drought on Lake Moultrie. The evidence of former inhabitants had historians and hobbyists alike exploring the dried areas of lakes Marion and Moultrie for a rare glimpse into a time that's been preserved under water since the 1940s. (Jim Huff/Santee Cooper)

These are believed to be the remains of the Santee River Cypress Lumber Co., located in the former town of Ferguson. Presently, this embakment can be found on Lake Marion near Eutawville in Orangeburg County. The massive wall is all that remains of a dry kiln. (Jim Huff/Santee Cooper)

These are the remains of a lock from the original Santee Canal, visible from the drought on Lake Moultrie. The evidence of former inhabitants had historians and hobbyists alike exploring the dried areas of lakes Marion and Moultrie for a rare glimpse into a time that's been preserved under water since the 1940s. (Jim Huff/Santee Cooper)

These are believed to be the remains of the Santee River Cypress Lumber Co., located in the former town of Ferguson. Presently, this embakment can be found on Lake Marion near Eutawville in Orangeburg County. The massive wall is all that remains of a dry kiln. (Jim Huff/Santee Cooper)

A small fragment of a dish rests among dried fresh-water oyster shells. (Jim Huff/Santee Cooper)

The drought on lakes Marion and Moultrie has revealed myriad
challenges to the counties and people who rely on them as a source
of revenue and recreation, but the receding waters have also
uncovered fragments of an era long preserved beneath the lake
surface.

Traditionally regarded as a sportsman's paradise, the drought
transformed the Santee Cooper lakes into fertile fields for
historical enthusiasts and people with personal ties to the
area.

Retired physician Norman Walsh is a bit of a both. He grew up in
Pinopolis and lived there until 1958.

"Our home was on Lake Moultrie — on the east side, on the water
— and I began my experiences on the lake the day it came up in
1941," Walsh says. "As soon as I was old enough, I was out on it in
boats and spent most of each summer on the lake."

Walsh returned to the area a few years ago, and memories of his
early years in Pinopolis were the impetus for the book
"Plantations, Pineland Villages, Pinopolis and Its People," written
in collaboration with Pinopolis resident and fellow historical
hobbyist Cecy Guerry.

Last Christmas Eve, the Santee Cooper lakes dropped to an
elevation of approximately 66.25 feet, a level not seen since the
early 1950s and more than six feet below normal levels for that
time of year. The lakes have since risen to more ideal depths, but
those low levels created new avenues for Walsh and Guerry to
explore.

"Our interest in the drought began out of curiosity in wanting
to see the places we wrote about in the book," Walsh says. "We
could actually go onto the lakebed and see the ruins of the home
sites we had written about."

In their book, Guerry and Walsh detailed an area located within
Berkeley, Calhoun, Clarendon, Orangeburg and Sumter counties that
once was part of the Southern plantation system and now holds the
potential to reconnect South Carolinians with their place in
history, if only briefly.

"It's one of the best areas for South Carolinians to see
themselves, because it is a pretty good mirror that talks about
community and about development and economics," says State
Archaeologist Dr. Jonathan Leader. "The whole area is important,
literally, from the get-go. The Indians overlapped with the
colonists. . . . Then you have the enslaved Africans who
eventually became free and were living in the area as well. So you
have that entire history, from European economic suppression to
American economic freedom — the whole tapestry of American
life."

By 1930, however, that tapestry was frayed.

In his book "History of Santee Cooper: 1934-1984," noted South
Carolina historian Dr. Walter Edgar paints a bleak picture of the
state in the years between the Civil War and World War II. The
prosperity enjoyed in the antebellum years gave way to economic
ruin, especially in the former plantation country along the upper
reaches of the Cooper and Santee rivers. He writes the few isolated
landowners who managed to hold on to their estates were the
exception.

"Once elegant homes had been converted into tenant housing or
abandoned altogether," Edgar writes. "The overproduction of cotton
had robbed the soils of their nutrients and created tremendous
erosion problems. The collapse of the price of cotton after World
War I had caused thousands of farmers to leave the land. Some were
forced off by foreclosure, but others simply abandoned their homes.
By the end of the 1920s, thousands of acres of once-productive
farmland lay idle and forgotten."

The sun had set on South Carolina's agrarian economy. The Stock
Market Crash of 1929 complicated an already dire economic
situation, especially in rural counties like Berkeley where,
according to Edgar, there was only a capital investment of $113,000
in 1930. It became clear that the state needed an economic shot in
the arm, and it returned to the territory between the Santee and
Cooper rivers for that boost.

According to Edgar, South Carolina flirted with tapping the
Cooper and Santee rivers for economic growth as far back as 1770.
In those early years, the promise of improved inland navigation and
transportation of goods were the biggest drivers, but private
ventures had either failed or stalled. By the 1920s, the interest
had largely shifted to the possibility of hydroelectric power.

In his 1968 book "River of the Carolinas: The Santee," Henry
Savage Jr. writes, "One would think that to look for hydroelectric
plant locations amid the swamps and pine flats of the Carolina Low
Country would be about as profitable as a search for snakes in
Ireland."

Nevertheless, Savage writes, surveys conducted some 150 years
before the Great Depression revealed "a unique phenomenon."

"The headwaters of the Cooper River, which rises but a few miles
south of the course of the Santee, lay 35 feet below the level of
the Santee," Savage writes. "So if the level of the Santee were
raised 40 feet by a dam and the river diverted through the low
ridge of the Cooper River a 75-foot head could be obtained."

This represented real power potential, capable of pulling the
Lowcountry and South Carolina out an economic nosedive. Both
private and political interests advocated legislation that would
create a public corporation to complete a project begun by the
Columbia Railway and Navigation Company in the 1920s to construct a
canal, dam and power plant. This culminated in an enabling act
signed April 7, 1934, by Governor Ibra C. Blackwood that created
the South Carolina Public Service Authority, more commonly known as
Santee Cooper.

Edgar writes the first clearing for the dams and powerhouse
began on April 18, 1939. By the following June, Santee Cooper had
acquired some 200,000 acres of land. But it came at a steep price —
literally and figuratively.

"There were, and still are, some hard feelings on the part of
some families who were uprooted by the project," Edgar writes.
"Santee Cooper paid fair market value for the land. Some critics
said it paid way too much — an average of $12.19 per acre when
farmland elsewhere in the state went for $2 per acre or less."

As communities moved to make way for the lakes, they left behind
remnants that were ultimately submerged beneath the rising waters
of lakes Marion and Moultrie. But as the drought pushed back their
waters these past several months, an astounding array of artifacts
has captured the imagination of many.

"It's been more than a historian could hope for," Walsh
says.

His interest lies primarily with documenting the locations that
have become exposed, whereas Guerry is more preoccupied with
finding tangible artifacts.

"It can be a section of a plate the size of my fingernail. It
can be a hoe head. It can be a button. Just something that shows
people were there," she says.

It's this kind of enthusiasm that Leader says makes his job
easy.

"South Carolina is one of the places I've been where the people
really are still very much connected to their landscape," he says.
"I don't spend a great deal of my time arguing with people about
the importance of history."

Leader and the staff at the South Carolina Institute of
Archaeology and Anthropology have been going through their archival
materials to see what's already been collected and documented about
the area, and they've organized a task force of individuals with
specialized knowledge of its history and ecology.

"The idea is to get as good a sample as we can and do as much as
we can to preserve the history, to get the story out, to make sure
it gets into the schools and make sure the local community has that
connection again to their past that they can pass on to the
future," Leader says. "This is everybody's history, and if we get
it out to everybody, chances are maybe it will be remembered and
used appropriately."

Leader calls the drought a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but
not just for him and fellow academics.

"It presents an opportunity for people to own their history, in
an appropriate sense, and to be fully involved. It doesn't have to
be the play toy of the professional few. It shouldn't be," he says.
"South Carolina is incredibly rich, in terms of its history. Ã¢ÂÂ¦
We were seminal in so many different things over time, that any
time you have the opportunity to take a look at these things on the
ground, you can't help but re-write history. You can't help but
bring forward new information that people didn't know or didn't
understand its significance. But it's all significant."

This article, by Kevin F. Langston, was originally published
in the Spring 2008 edition of "PowerSource," a publication of
Santee Cooper Corporate Communications. It is reprinted with
permission.

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